People don't optimize

[haakon1]

<<Why aren't we all Navy SEALs and brain surgeons and Hollywood Stars?>>

Supply and demand.
-- The supply of people able to do those jobs well is small, and the demand for them in our economy (and money to pay for them) is limited.

-- There's much more demand for people to drive garbage trucks or work at McDonald's than to be Hollywood Stars. We NEED a lot more of the former than of the latter. But there's also a LOT more people who CAN do a decent job of driving a garbage truck or working a cash register than of being a Hollywood Star, so supply and demand means those broader jobs don't pay as well. If there were a shortage of people able/willing to do those jobs, their pay would go up.

-- Note that ACTOR is not a high paying job and suffers from severe unemployment/underemployment -- most actors need a day job as a taxi driver or waiter or whatever -- because of the supply of people who would LIKE to be Actors is much higher than the demand for them. ("Hollywood Star" is a very small niche within the Actor category.)

As for me:

Why I'm not a Navy SEAL.

-- I prefer the Army to the Navy. I think the Army is the real deal, and my dad, my uncle, my paternal grandfather, and my paternal great grandfather were all in the Army -- only my maternal grandfather (who died before I was born) and a cousin were in the Navy.
-- I was never actually in the Armed Forces because I failed the physical - bad ankles. The job I was going for capitalized on my higher stats (Int) and not my lower ones (Dex and Str).

Why I'm not a brain surgeon.

-- Biology doesn't interest me.
-- I'm squeamish.
-- I was sickly as a kid. Spent too much time around hospitals. Don't want anything to do with that as an adult.

Why I'm not a Hollywood Star.

-- I tried acting. It makes me nervous and I'm not great at it.
-- My charisma is average at best.


I imagine my PC's have similar stories on why they choose one Class and not another.

 

[Janx]

I love how my "lso, don't bend my words saying that someone should be a complete gimp to have a good character. No one is saying that, what I am saying is that someone should have a meaningful drawback that DOES have an impact on the game/story."

was completely ignored. I'm out.

I don't disagree with anything you said here.

I don't think I bent your words. I explained that we were talking about flaws in the extreme gimpyness, and NOT what you were talking about.

Most fictional characters have flaws. Most of them don't have extreme gimping flaws that inhibit their very ability to participate in the kind of story we're telling. I think Celebrim and I are talking about how some players think a character has to be really crappy in order to be a "realistic" character.

your wording makes you sound way more upset than a person who just showed up at the tail end of the discussion should be.

 

[Celebrim]

I love how my "lso, don't bend my words saying that someone should be a complete gimp to have a good character. No one is saying that, what I am saying is that someone should have a meaningful drawback that DOES have an impact on the game/story."

was completely ignored. I'm out.

It was not ignored, nor did I bend your words. However, the snippet of you quote is not your main point, nor does it consitute a rebuttle to the line of argument that I responded with since I'm perfectly willing to argue against even teeny flaws being essential to an interesting character.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

what do you mean low stat PC? Those are pretty decent stats.

1) his aggregate stat bonus is +2: in some games, that means he is either at the campaign minimum or is rerolling something. In a game world, he is just barely above statistically average.

2) he has 2 stats in negative modifiers, one of which has a -2 stat mod by itself. You won't see that with most point buy PCs. And you also won't see many players playing something with a 6 in any stat.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Why aren't we all Navy SEALs and brain surgeons and Hollywood Stars?

Short answer: because the Hollywood stars would all starve to death, and the SEALS would wind up killing one another until they had few enough people to survive via pure hunting.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I was sickly as a kid. Spent too much time around hospitals. Don't want anything to do with that as an adult.

*ahem*

Could I interest Sir in a finely crafted, two-handed runesword formerly owned by royalty?

 

[Janx]

1) his aggregate stat bonus is +2: in some games, that means he is either at the campaign minimum or is rerolling something. In a game world, he is just barely above statistically average.

2) he has 2 stats in negative modifiers, one of which has a -2 stat mod by itself. You won't see that with most point buy PCs. And you also won't see many players playing something with a 6 in any stat.

one of the key observations from this is that different groups may operate on different scales of expected power level.

We use 4d6, keep the best three, six times, arrange to taste. Statistically, that's a 12.something average result.

Your PC looks close enough to that expected result, that to my group he's a "normal" PC.

Now we all hope to roll an 18 and a 17 and other good stats. But they don't happen all the time.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Your group & mine are pretty similar, then, but if you look around these boards, there are a lot of games in which 1s or 1s & 2s get rerolled, or any stat below an 8 gets tossed, or they use a point buy in which anything below an 8 is impossible.

We are throwbacks, buddy.

 

[Jacob Marley]

We use 4d6, keep the best three, six times, arrange to taste. Statistically, that's a 12.something average result.

Your PC looks close enough to that expected result, that to my group he's a "normal" PC.

Using your method, the average stat array is ~16, ~14, ~13, ~12, ~10, ~8. That's a normal PC with an aggregate modifier of +6.
@Dannyalcatraz 's array of 15, 15, 13, 11, 8, 6 is certianly in-line with the above array. However, due to the frequency of odd results, it produces a character that is weaker on the top and bottom ends, as well as in the aggregate. (Though the character is very playable.)

To me, the question is less about whether that character is an average PC and more about would @Dannyalcatraz have made the same decisions regarding personality and characterization with the more optimized array than he did with the less optimized array? (I think not.)

Personally, I think that characterization and optimization are seperate insofar as you can play a highly optimized character who also has an interesting and unique personality. However, unoptimized choices can inspire creativity where optimized choices would not.

Edit:

Your group & mine are pretty similar, then, but if you look around these boards, there are a lot of games in which 1s or 1s & 2s get rerolled, or any stat below an 8 gets tossed, or they use a point buy in which anything below an 8 is impossible.

We are throwbacks, buddy.

We also play 4d6 drop the lowest, arrange to taste. However, all replacement characters are made using 3d6, arrange to taste. It makes for some very risk-averse play!

 

[Janx]

Your group & mine are pretty similar, then, but if you look around these boards, there are a lot of games in which 1s or 1s & 2s get rerolled, or any stat below an 8 gets tossed, or they use a point buy in which anything below an 8 is impossible.

We are throwbacks, buddy.

Yeah. But I think our little dialog about your PC versus my expectation shows that one guy's idea of weak, ain't the same as another's, let alone, optimized.

Obviously, your PC is a wimp if everybody else rolled better, uses a more generous method.